So far this weekend has been pretty great. For starters, Friday morning I was checking my favorite blogs and when I went to Peas and Thank You I saw this. I won the giveaway for the Operation Beautiful book! I was (and am) so excited. I seriously cannot wait to get my hands on that book!

Another exciting thing happened this weekend: I went to mecca. No, we’re not talking religion here..we are talking Whole Foods. My very first visit. Yes, you’re reading that correctly. I had never been until today. And it. was. AWESOME.

Whole Foods!

See Hubs’ head at the bottom? Even he loved Whole Foods! 😀 And that is saying something. We ambled around the store checkin’ everything out. We were both pretty impressed, and the littles enjoyed the samples. We did too 🙂 We tried all kinds of cheeses, some coconut water, some crackers, and I had a grapefruit wedge. I was the only one that liked the coconut water. There were some definite yucky faces being given at the little sample cup! Before we checked out I grabbed a Raw Crunch bar. I had never had one before, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to try it! 🙂

Yummy!

At first it was a little odd texture wise. It’s raw and completely unprocessed, and there are alot of seeds and such in it. This was the dark chocolate flavor, but the chocolate was definitely a small part of the bar and didn’t overtake the flavor. After the intial texture weirdness, it was really good. I enjoyed all of the flavors and the best part was how light it was. I’d definitely recommend this! It’s also toddler approved. 🙂 If a 20 month old will chow down on it, it can’t be too bad right?

We also went to Trader Joe’s(which I adore and Hubs definitely does not), Wal-Mart (new blender! woohoo! :-D), grabbed lunch, and hit up the farmer’s market. You know I can’t be without a jar of Yah’s Best!

Obviously, it has been fabulous. 🙂 I hope your weekend is going as great as mine is.

It’s an obsession. I get up in the morning, stumble to the bathroom, and head to the scale before I’m even woken up. And that number dictates how I feel that day. Twice this week I’ve put the scale up in an attempt to break this bad habit, and twice I have brought it back out. I’ve read so many blogs written by women just like me who were obsessed with that number, but now are not. Alot of them don’t even own scales. I’d like to be that way some day, and not even have a need to have scales..but I’m trying to lose weight. On one hand I feel like I need the scales so I can track my progress, and on the other I feel like I could just judge my weight loss on how I feel and how my clothes fit or don’t fit.

So, I’m thinking..instead of trying to cut myself off cold turkey..maybe I’ll cut my scale usage down. Right now I weigh myself every. single. morning. I am going to try and weigh myself once a week..perhaps every Saturday morning. That way I don’t start my day off on that freaking number that drives me crazy. I know I shouldn’t let it, but I still do..and I’m still working on that.

On a semi-related note, have you seen all the posts about the Operation Beautiful book coming out? The author has a healthy living blog (which is a great read and you should check it out) and she started Operation Beautiful to promote self-esteem and fight against body image issues. The idea of Operation Beauty is that you leave litte inspirational notes around places. For instance, on a scale you might leave one that says “That number does not define you. You are beautiful!” along with the URL to the website so those that see the note can go check it out. In turn, those that see that note may leave their own notes..and those that see those will leave some..and so on and so forth. It’s an amazing movement, and I am thrilled that it is getting exposure. I hope that book sells like crazy! Good luck, Caitlin!

Yesterday I went for a walk/run. Why a walk/run? Well number one, I haven’t ran in years. Number two, I am extremely self concious. Self concious about running? That sounds pretty ridiculous, right?

I’ve always been self concious about working out, at least where people could see me. When I was a teenager I had a membership to a “spa”, which was really just a very fancy gym that also had a spa in it along with tanning beds and a health food restaraunt. I didn’t properly take advantage of my membership though, because I was too busy worried about what other people would think of me. I usually walked on the treadmill for about 10 minutes, ambled over to some machines and worked out for 5 minutes, wandered around like a lost child, and then headed to the tanning beds. Tanning was easy, it’s not like anyone could see you. Then I’d grab a smoothie and call it a day and feel really good about myself because I’d spent some time at the gym. Except the majority of my time was spent walking around and tanning. Lame!

I think that’s a side of effect of being obsessed with your weight/looks. Your obsession runs so deep that you are convinced that everyone else is thinking the same things you are. You are convinced that every person who happens to glance in your direction is judging you. It can be all consuming.

So, my walk/run yesterday? I was feeling the same way. Looking around, back and forth, paranoid that someone would see me. I felt comfortable because it looked like the neighbors weren’t home. I broke into a run, and I was feeling good until a car came up the road from behind me. And I stopped running. And I felt that uncomfortable paranoia that they were staring at me, judging me. I looked down at my Blackberry so it would look more like I was doing something and less like I had stopped because of them. After they went on down the road I thought about what had just happened. (And I won’t lie, I also thought about what a good blog post it would make :))

And the more I thought about it, the stupider I felt. Chances are they could really care less about whether I run like an injured goose, or if I look like I’m seconds from dying. And maybe they are thinking those things. Does it matter? I don’t know those people. I’ll never know if they think I’m fat, or if they’re in their cars laughing at the way I run. But I was ruining my workout because of what someone might see and what someone might think. I was depriving myself of something I wanted because someone else might be making fun of me. And the more these thoughts came, the more I felt like running. So, I did. I switched between running and walking for a while and then I stopped in to the house to get my dog and walk s0me more. We didn’t walk long, because as you can see below Albus is a small dog (he’s bigger now, though :)) and well..his short little legs can’t walk up and down hills very much.

Anyways, after our walk I did some jivamukti and thought about my walk/run. I felt very accomplished that I had actually ran and gotten over (at least in that moment) the fear that someone might see me and judge me. It felt like progress. Baby steps, people. Baby steps.

Those were the words of my lovely husband after tasting my smoothie disaster and promptly gagging. I don’t know what went wrong! It had blackberries, blueberries, frozen bananas, mango, baby spinach, and almond milk. Somehow it turned into a black sludge, so I added even more almond milk. The results were not very pleasing..it was too sickly sweet and the almond milk was kind overpowering. Which was odd, because I adore almond milk. I wished I had some orange juice or something citrusy to add to it, but alas I did not. So I had the bright idea to add water! Because what adds more flavor than water, right? *sigh* It was after the addition of the water that my husband tasted it and had trouble controlling his stomach contents. 🙂 Oh well. I reckon I’ll just have to keep tweaking to get the monster I want, because today’s certainly was not it.

Have any of you heard of the show Huge on ABC Family? I have fallen in love with it. The story takes place at Camp Victory, which is a camp for overweight teenagers to go to. The idea is that while at camp they not only exercise, eat right and lose weight, but they explore their issues with food and their bodies. The main character is a girl named Willamena (Will) Rader, played by Nikki Blonsky. She is there because her family sent her, but she fights against changing her body. She simply doesn’t feel the need to. As she puts it in the first episode, “My fat is my bff!”. I don’t want to give away the story so I won’t go into too many details, but it’s a really awesome series. I think it’s absolutely amazing to have such a show on tv because it’s not like the focus of the show is LOSE WEIGHT, it’s BE HEALTHY! It explores way more than a number on the scale, and I think that is crucial for young people especially. Speaking of healthy, check out Angela’s Size Healthy post. I found it a few days ago and I really enjoyed it.

Laundry and working out are calling my name, but I will be back later tonight with a post about body image, being chained to the scale, and things of that nature. See you then! 😀

I feel as though I’ve ran into a brick wall, backed up, and hit it again..over and over and over all freaking day. Scratch that: all freaking week. My three year old has terrorized me as if it’s her job. I know it must seem odd for me to say that my three year old terrorized me, but I assure you it is the correct word. And you would not doubt this if you saw her go from angelic to demon spawn in the blink of an eye. So, she has spent most of her day in time out, and thankfully as I write this she is in her bed asleep no doubt refueling the demonic side of her that turns her into a screaming, kicking, slapping, back-talking terror child. This is a phase, right? RIGHT? A really long phase? RIGHT?!

In other news, I have been calming my poor abused mind and body with jivamukti yoga. I downloaded a video from Yogadownload.com and it is amazing. The best part is that after the workout the very last pose is savasana or “corpse pose”. Crazy name, crazier relaxation. Give it a shot, especially if you’ve had a rough day. The stress release almost makes the bad day worth it. Almost.